


Dawn of Humanity, Take Two

by Lempo Soi (Lemposoi)



Category: Red Dwarf
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Babies, Family, Fluff, Gen, Humor, POV Third Person, Past Tense, Science Fiction, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-10
Updated: 2011-02-10
Packaged: 2017-10-15 13:39:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/161338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lemposoi/pseuds/Lempo%20Soi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lister makes some babies. Rimmer has trouble dealing with it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dawn of Humanity, Take Two

**Author's Note:**

> Diverges from canon during the Rimmerworld episode. I screwed up on the timeline again, but uh... It's AU. That's why they're back on the Dwarf. Yeah. AU.
> 
> Contains: Fluff. Contemplating infanticide.
> 
> Could be Lister/Rimmer preslash, but only if you want it to be. It's _slashy_ but it’s not _slash_.

"Are you sure you've got this right, Holly?" Lister asked, just as he'd asked every single day for the past seven months.

"Yes, Dave," Holly said in a resigned voice. 

"Only the manual said the chemical balance had to be modulated exactly," Lister continued, like he did every day.

"It is modulated with perfect precision, Dave."

"How can you be sure?"

"Well, the babies are still alive, aren't they?"

Lister frowned at Holly's screen. "That's not funny."

"It wasn't meant to be," Holly replied, mildly offended. He thought his jokes were quite good, when he chose to make any.

Lister lay his hand on the window of the incubation room's and petted it, as if to pet the pod resting on a lifted net inside. The pod was about the size of a crouched adult human, though the nearly grown foetuses inside were much smaller. Its roots spilled over the net and into bowls of mechanically purified water. 

"Imagine it," Lister said. "Three babies."

Strictly speaking the biotechnology they had collected from Rimmerworld was not meant to create composite offspring (as Holly kept calling babies that had two parents with different genetic make-up), but any technology versatile and simple enough that Arnold Rimmer could induce it to produce XX clones from an XY template couldn't be too hard to figure out between a senile computer and a sanitation droid. It had still taken them a few false starts to get it calibrated. Perhaps Dave was thinking about those five small canisters of ashes they'd shot into space before. It seemed pointless to Holly. They could always try again.

Holly switched his attention to the comm room. Rimmer was leaning over a monitor and a keyboard, a half-empty cup of coffee by his side. He switched the monitor screen to a physics self-study course as Holly's head blinked into the screen above him. A glance at the unit's history told Holly that Rimmer had been viewing the security camera feed from the incubation chamber, but Holly had long since decided it was better for the crew's state of mind if he didn't mention details like that.

"Ah, Holly," Rimmer said. "Could you find me those lectures in advanced physics? I'd like to get ahead of my current course. It's getting to be a drag running through the basics all over again for every new navigational theory."

"Sure, Arnold," Holly said and gave him the basic physics course again. After all, he might pick some of it up on the one hundred and twelfth time through.

Kryten waddled in carrying armfuls of soft cloth. "Mr Rimmer, sir, I've found the jackpot!"

"Oh?" said Rimmer coolly, swivelling around in his chair. "I wouldn't dare hope that that means you've actually found anything useful, such as fresh stores of cow milk or a new energy source for the Dwarf?"

"It's better than that, Mr Rimmer. I've found baby clothes!" He held up his findings proudly. "Booties, too! And all these soft blankets, which I understand are perfect for sensitive baby skin. Turns out there was a nursery on Level 15 and a Babies R Us in the shopping district of Level 74. Oh, I can't wait to have babies to care for! I hear their bodily functions are fascinating."

"Your programming, Kryten - doesn't it get to you sometimes?" Rimmer asked.

"In a manner of speaking it gets to me all the time, sir," Kryten replied, puzzled. "My programming is me. I am my programming. What's your point, if you don't mind me asking, sir?"

"It's just that I would find it a bit of a drag if there was a program in my head telling me that wiping baby poo was anything to look forward to."

"Aren't you excited about the infants at all, sir?"

"I couldn't care less. It's Lister's project, so let Lister take care of it. What do I care if humanity survives? I'm already dead. I won't be a part of it whatever happens. Rimmer has left the rotten building, and it's not like anyone lets him forget about it."

"Well, technically, since Baby #3 is patterned after the XX-modification of your genome and Baby #2 is a random composite of you and Mr Lister, your genetic make-up, Mr Rimmer, will come to dominate future generations. A prospect to consider, isn't it, sir?" Kryten's rubbery face twisted in something like distaste.

"I still say it was a stupid decision," Rimmer said hotly, tapping a robust staccato on the keyboard. Holly read the output silently as it was stored into his memory: _git git Git gir hgh git git git git git_. "If you're going to copy somebody's genetic material it certainly shouldn't be Lister's. The man is so inbred even Joe-Bob Hillbilly wouldn't let him inseminate his sister-daughter. Why not combine my genetic material with, I don't know, that delicious morsel in the command chain, you know," he turned to Holly, "the therapist with the hair?"

"You mean Lieutenant St. Davis, who had degrees in psychiatry and psychology?" asked Holly.

"And the afro. You've still got her file, don't you? Now, if it had been her and me, those babies would grow up to rule the world. Instead, Mr I-Banged-My-Mother-and-Made-Myself thinks the future belongs to kids who won't know a soap bar from a star-chart and will probably have two rows of front teeth. No thanks. I want nothing to do with it."

"What about Baby #3?" Kryten asked. "She's all yours."

A shudder ran through Rimmer's hologrammatic body and Holly could see his program access fractured memories from Rimmerworld, as it had with some frequency recently, especially of the Rimmer women. He had chosen to have most of the centuries he'd spent imprisoned on the planet of his clones deleted from his memory, but some of it Holly had had to leave just to keep his mind stable, or as stable as it ever had been. 

"Lister can have her," Rimmer said and hit the delete key, throwing the file saying ' _git git Git gir hgh git git git git git_ ' into the electric recycle bin, which really only shuffled it into another part of Holly's memory. It made an interesting archive, and one Holly liked to visit whenever the year had been particularly uneventful and rifling through other people's secrets and aborted thoughts seemed like a good alternative to contemplating the endless boredom of deep space. He was bored now, but he could read Rimmer's mind first-hand anyway, so he went looking for the Cat on the security cameras instead. Perhaps he'd be doing one of his impromptu song and dance numbers again. 

The _Red Dwarf_ was like a television set for Holly. Most of it was repeats, but as entertainment went, it was better than nothing.

*

It was the best day of Lister's life. It was objectively better than the birth of his first sons because he wasn't in heart-stopping agony this time, and also because there were more babies. 

They were lying in one big crib pushed up against the medibay's wall, clothed and diapered and attached to a monitoring device, the latter more to satisfy Kryten and Holly's curiousity than any worry for their health. They each had ten toes and fingers in all the right places and, since they hadn't had to push through a birth canal, they lacked that mauled look most newborns have. They had all had a healthy cry about the state of the world and the unfairness of it all earlier, a sorrow which seemed to have exhausted itself for the moment.

The pale one with the beginnings of brown hair on her head was named Cassie, Lister had decided, and despite really wanting to call the confused-looking chubby one Jim and the squirrel-faced one with fuzzy black hair Bexley, he'd figured it would be dishonouring the memory of the Jim and Bexley he'd lost. Kryten had firmly vetoed "Rasta" and "Billy", so he'd settled on Wilmot and Marie, after his first adoptive family and grandmother. 

Lister loved every one of them more than he'd even thought possible. He leaned over the crib and grinned and couldn't seem to stop grinning. Marie was already asleep, and Wilmot blinked at him blearily as if he was only a moment away from nodding off.

They were all his. Yes, even Cassie. Lister didn't particularly care what genes went into creating his babies. Cassie would grow up to be as different from Rimmer as Ace had – more, probably, when you thought about it. Marie would not grow into a copy of Lister either, and who knew what wonders Wilmot would bring? And, unlike Jim and Bexley, there would be no dimensional discrepancy or accelerated growth, just years of nappy-changing followed by years of picking up toys followed by years of dealing with three kids in puberty all at once. Lister couldn't wait.

"I'm a dad," he said and did a very quiet, very careful victory dance, so as not to disturb his sleepy children.

*

"Lister, did you ever read the novella _'A Room of One's Own'_ by Virginia Woolf?" Rimmer asked.

"As if you did." Lister glanced up from Cassie at his arm, suckling a bottle contentedly, to Rimmer, who was seated by his desk examining a star-chart he didn't understand.

"I did too," Rimmer lied. "It's a moving portrait of the woman artist's eternal dilemma."

"Now I know you didn't," Lister said complacently, back to gazing adoringly at his daughter. 

"Shows how much you know. Anyway, the gist of her argument was that genius cannot flourish when it's constantly mobbed by other people's concerns and wants and unwanted companionship or, not to put too fine a point on it, babies."

"I'm not moving out, Rimmer. I like me bunk, and I've already welded the diaper cupboard to the wall."

"I hadn't noticed," Rimmer said, giving it a look of disgust. The skutters would have done a better job of it, but Lister had insisted on doing the work himself for some sentimental reason, and now the ugly thing was taking space right where Rimmer used to keep his giant banana. 

"If you don't like it, you move out. There's plenty of empty rooms in this quarter. Take the captain's cabin, I don't care."

It stung. Rimmer hated to admit it, but it stung. He and Lister had been in this deadlock ever since he'd first been resurrected as a hologram, neither wanting to leave the familiar turf of their shared cabin, but now it was Rimmer alone against Lister and three babies that woke up every hour of the night and screamed their heads off until they were fed or changed or fussed over. Rimmer had steadfastly refused to touch the squealing things, but between Lister and Kryten fluttering about like a couple of hens he hadn't had a proper night's sleep since... well, since the damn babies had arrived.

He ought to drown the lot of them. Blow them out of an airlock. Make soup out of them. Anything to stop the bloody screaming. He had an idea, though, that not even Lister – particularly not Lister, under the circumstances – would forgive him for infanticide. But, dammit, he liked his bunk too. It was a question of principle.

"Sometimes I think you enjoy torturing me," Rimmer complained, turning back to the star-chart, which continued to make no sense.

"How can you hate them so much?" Lister asked, putting Cassie back in her crib. "They've never done you any harm. They're just tiny people who need love and care. You were just the same once yourself."

"Yes, and my mother hired a woman to read gossip magazines while I did all my own growing up," Rimmer snapped. "I'm telling you, Lister, you're spoiling those brats rotten, you and Kryten. You could just slap a drip on them, leave them in the medibay and go play golf until they're old enough to be reasonable."

There was no reply, so Rimmer looked back over his shoulder and saw Lister stare at him, eyes narrowed. "All right," Lister said at last, "you need to feed Wilmot."

"I thought I made it perfectly clear that I want nothing to do with your--" But Lister had already picked up the squirming baby and was holding him out to Rimmer. "Look, I'm not going to--"

"Make sure to support his head." Lister handed Wilmot over, and Rimmer couldn't help reaching out for him. His hands moved as if of their own accord, and he found himself balancing the baby on his arm. Lister handed him the bottle. "Don't tilt it back too far. Let him decide how much he wants."

"This is ridiculous," Rimmer protested, but tentatively offered the bottle to the little nuisance anyway. Lister touched his hand to angle the bottle better. 

Wilmot was heavy and warm, and fumbled at the bottle with hands that hadn't got the handle of grabbing things yet. Rimmer nudged his lips with the bottle. "Clearly not the sharpest tool in the shed," he murmured. "Should throw this one back."

Lister was standing by the microwave, humming to himself as he tested a drop of milk from the third bottle on his hand. Marie was making her pre-scream noises in the crib. 

Rimmer was afraid to stand up. What if he'd drop the thing? What if he forgot the head-supporting thing and killed it? "Is he supposed to be this hot?" he asked aloud. 

"Babies are kind of warm," Lister said, picking up Marie. "If you don't like it, turn off your heat receptors."

"No, it's – it's fine." Rimmer stared at the child in his arms, his mind wheeling. This was a ridiculous situation. It had nothing to do with him. He was certainly not going to start playing nursemaid to some squealing, freakish, unnatural... babies.

Wilmot made snotty noises while he drank, and his tiny fingers grasped at Rimmer's hologrammatic jacket.

*

"And that is the secret to life," Rimmer concluded. "Now you know everything you need to become a winner. Fast track to the top." Cassie, perched on Rimmer's stomach as he lay back in his bunk, began to chew on the collar of her jammies. Rimmer groaned and pulled it out of her mouth. "No, come now. Have you been listening to a word I've said? Because I'm sure I didn't just spend half an hour advising you to consume textiles."

"I don't know, she might have a point," said Lister from the top bunk, with his pre-joke chuckle. "Was a time when munching carpet could get you places."

"Lister, I will not have you teaching our daughter to be a lesbian. She's barely a year old."

There was a silence from the top bunk, then Rimmer saw Lister's face appear above. It took him a moment to notice his incredulous stare. Rimmer frowned. "What?"

"Did you just say 'our daughter'?"

"No," Rimmer answered automatically.

"Yes you did. You called her our daughter."

"No, I called her m- your daughter, Lister. Yours. Not mine. Certainly not ours. I remember it distinctly. I said I won't have you teaching your daughter to be a lesbian."

Lister's face was beginning to break into a grin. "Holly?" he called.

"He did say 'our daughter'," Holly confirmed.

Rimmer's face suddenly felt flaming hot, and a panic was beginning to dry his throat. "I may have slipped into a Saturnian accent," he squeaked. "Back in school, I used to room with—"

"He meant to say 'our', too," Holly put in mildly. "I can play it back for you if you like." Holly could rewind Rimmer's program and replay it, making him do and say the things he'd just done and said all over again. 

"That's all right, Hol," Lister said. "You know it freaks the kids out." It didn't, it just freaked the men out. Holly gave an eyebrow wiggle in lieu of a shrug and winked out.

"Ouwa doh," said Cassie.

Rimmer stared at the child, who had put the collar back in her mouth. Lister whooped. "Yes!"

"It doesn't mean anything," Rimmer said. "She's just repeating sounds. Her first word is going to be better than that. Something like 'strategy' or 'success'."

"I think 'our daughter' will do just fine," Lister said and jumped off the top bunk, picking up the chortling Cassie and twirling her around before kissing her on her nose. 

Rimmer snorted with disgust. "I might be wrong, but I seem to recall you were once a man, Lister." 

"And you are still a dirty misogynist," Lister said happily, and danced out the door, calling for Kryten.

"I'm not a misogynist," Rimmer grumbled, opened a book, but then put it back down again and followed Lister out the door.

He found Lister in the playroom with Kryten and the Cat, setting Cassie down on the blankets next to her siblings. The Cat was crouched over Wilmot, trying to lick his unruly hair into place. Lister swatted him away. "Make yourself useful and get the camera, will you? It's a big day!"

"What am I, a dog?" the Cat asked huffily and jumped on top of the corner cabinet, perching himself over the scene.

"I – I've got it," Rimmer offered uncertainly from the doorway. "Holly? One of the best cameras you have, please." 

"It's only going to use the media input into your light bee anyway," Holly said, peering at them from the small screen set to the back of the room. "If you want, you can just say 'click' and I'll record it for you."

Rimmer shuddered. Did Holly have to keep reminding him that he was dead?

"No, hang on, I've got it," Lister said. "Can you lower the security camera to eye level, Hol?"

"Accessing the light bee input would be easier," Holly argued. "Better resolution, too."

"No, Rimmer needs to be in the picture. Come on." Lister gestured for Rimmer to come closer. He sat down on the blanket and gathered the children around him. Wilmot was wholly focused on a rubber duckie, Marie was beginning to whine, and Cassie repeated her first two words over and over, delighted at the attention they were getting. "You too, Cat," Lister called, but the Cat snubbed them and bounced out of the room.

Kryten and Lister were arranged behind the children while Holly lowered the security camera. Rimmer walked hesitantly over and sat gingerly down next to Lister. "I don't really see the point--"

"There you are, dad," Lister said, slung his arm around Rimmer's neck and pulled him off balance, planting a big kiss on his cheek.

Rimmer was still too shocked to move when Holly's bored voice said "Click."

"Did you get that, Hol?" Lister snickered while Rimmer reeled. 

"Of course I did," Holly said. "I suppose you want the still and not the video."

"Oh God," said Rimmer weakly. "I'm a dad."

Rimmer was deceased, most of humanity had died out, he was lost in space on a crummy mining ship and he had children with a man who thought beer and curry cereal was a fit breakfast.

And the absolute worst thing about it was that, deep down inside, he didn't really mind.


End file.
